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• Joy! | Important Information About Your iPad 3G

  - by Jeff Julian

  Looks like I was one of the lucky 114,000 who AT&T lost their email to “hackers”.  Why is “hackers” in “double quotes”.  I can just imagine some executive at AT&T in their “Oh No, We Messed Up Meeting” saying, what happened?  Then someone replied, well we have had a breach and “hackers” broke in (using the quote in the air gesture) and stole our iPad 3G customers emails. Oh well, I am sure my email has been sold and sold again by many different vendors, why not AT&T now.  At least Dorothy Attwood could have gave us her email to give to someone else instead of blinking it through a newsletter system. June 13, 2010 Dear Valued AT&T Customer, Recently there was an issue that affected some of our customers with AT&T 3G service for iPad resulting in the release of their customer email addresses. I am writing to let you know that no other information was exposed and the matter has been resolved.  We apologize for the incident and any inconvenience it may have caused. Rest assured, you can continue to use your AT&T 3G service on your iPad with confidence. Here’s some additional detail: On June 7 we learned that unauthorized computer “hackers” maliciously exploited a function designed to make your iPad log-in process faster by pre-populating an AT&T authentication page with the email address you used to register your iPad for 3G service.  The self-described hackers wrote software code to randomly generate numbers that mimicked serial numbers of the AT&T SIM card for iPad – called the integrated circuit card identification (ICC-ID) – and repeatedly queried an AT&T web address.   When a number generated by the hackers matched an actual ICC-ID, the authentication page log-in screen was returned to the hackers with the email address associated with the ICC-ID already populated on the log-in screen. The hackers deliberately went to great efforts with a random program to extract possible ICC-IDs and capture customer email addresses.  They then put together a list of these emails and distributed it for their own publicity. As soon as we became aware of this situation, we took swift action to prevent any further unauthorized exposure of customer email addresses.  Within hours, AT&T disabled the mechanism that automatically populated the email address. Now, the authentication page log-in screen requires the user to enter both their email address and their password. I want to assure you that the email address and ICC-ID were the only information that was accessible. Your password, account information, the contents of your email, and any other personal information were never at risk.  The hackers never had access to AT&T communications or data networks, or your iPad.  AT&T 3G service for other mobile devices was not affected. While the attack was limited to email address and ICC-ID data, we encourage you to be alert to scams that could attempt to use this information to obtain other data or send you unwanted email. You can learn more about phishing by visiting the AT&T website. AT&T takes your privacy seriously and does not tolerate unauthorized access to its customers’ information or company websites.   We will cooperate with law enforcement in any investigation of unauthorized system access and to prosecute violators to the fullest extent of the law. AT&T acted quickly to protect your information – and we promise to keep working around the clock to keep your information safe.  Thank you very much for your understanding, and for being an AT&T customer. Sincerely, Dorothy Attwood Senior Vice President, Public Policy and Chief Privacy Officer for AT&T Technorati Tags: AT&T,iPad 3G,Email

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• SQL SERVER – Puzzle #1 – Querying Pattern Ranges and Wild Cards

  - by Pinal Dave

  Note: Read at the end of the blog post how you can get five Joes 2 Pros Book #1 and a surprise gift. I have been blogging for almost 7 years and every other day I receive questions about Querying Pattern Ranges. The most common way to solve the problem is to use Wild Cards. However, not everyone knows how to use wild card properly. SQL Queries 2012 Joes 2 Pros Volume 1 – The SQL Queries 2012 Hands-On Tutorial for Beginners Book On Amazon | Book On Flipkart Learn SQL Server get all the five parts combo kit Kit on Amazon | Kit on Flipkart Many people know wildcards are great for finding patterns in character data. There are also some special sequences with wildcards that can give you even more power. This series from SQL Queries 2012 Joes 2 Pros® Volume 1 will show you some of these cool tricks. All supporting files are available with a free download from the www.Joes2Pros.com web site. This example is from the SQL 2012 series Volume 1 in the file SQLQueries2012Vol1Chapter2.2Setup.sql. If you need help setting up then look in the “Free Videos” section on Joes2Pros under “Getting Started” called “How to install your labs” Querying Pattern Ranges The % wildcard character represents any number of characters of any length. Let’s find all first names that end in the letter ‘A’. By using the percentage ‘%’ sign with the letter ‘A’, we achieve this goal using the code sample below: SELECT * FROM Employee WHERE FirstName LIKE '%A' To find all FirstName values beginning with the letters ‘A’ or ‘B’ we can use two predicates in our WHERE clause, by separating them with the OR statement. Finding names beginning with an ‘A’ or ‘B’ is easy and this works fine until we want a larger range of letters as in the example below for ‘A’ thru ‘K’: SELECT * FROM Employee WHERE FirstName LIKE 'A%' OR FirstName LIKE 'B%' OR FirstName LIKE 'C%' OR FirstName LIKE 'D%' OR FirstName LIKE 'E%' OR FirstName LIKE 'F%' OR FirstName LIKE 'G%' OR FirstName LIKE 'H%' OR FirstName LIKE 'I%' OR FirstName LIKE 'J%' OR FirstName LIKE 'K%' The previous query does find FirstName values beginning with the letters ‘A’ thru ‘K’. However, when a query requires a large range of letters, the LIKE operator has an even better option. Since the first letter of the FirstName field can be ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘C’, ‘D’, ‘E’, ‘F’, ‘G’, ‘H’, ‘I’, ‘J’ or ‘K’, simply list all these choices inside a set of square brackets followed by the ‘%’ wildcard, as in the example below: SELECT * FROM Employee WHERE FirstName LIKE '[ABCDEFGHIJK]%' A more elegant example of this technique recognizes that all these letters are in a continuous range, so we really only need to list the first and last letter of the range inside the square brackets, followed by the ‘%’ wildcard allowing for any number of characters after the first letter in the range. Note: A predicate that uses a range will not work with the ‘=’ operator (equals sign). It will neither raise an error, nor produce a result set. --Bad query (will not error or return any records) SELECT * FROM Employee WHERE FirstName = '[A-K]%' Question: You want to find all first names that start with the letters A-M in your Customer table and end with the letter Z. Which SQL code would you use? a. SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE FirstName LIKE 'm%z' b. SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE FirstName LIKE 'a-m%z' c. SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE FirstName LIKE 'a-m%z' d. SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE FirstName LIKE '[a-m]%z' e. SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE FirstName LIKE '[a-m]z%' f. SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE FirstName LIKE '[a-m]%z' g. SELECT * FROM Customer WHERE FirstName LIKE '[a-m]z%' Contest Leave a valid answer before June 18, 2013 in the comment section. 5 winners will be selected from all the valid answers and will receive Joes 2 Pros Book #1. 1 Lucky person will get a surprise gift from Joes 2 Pros. The contest is open for all the countries where Amazon ships the book (USA, UK, Canada, India and many others). Special Note: Read all the options before you provide valid answer as there is a small trick hidden in answers. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Joes 2 Pros, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Production Access Denied! Who caused this rule anyways?

  - by Matt Watson

  One of the biggest challenges for most developers is getting access to production servers. In smaller dev teams of less than about 5 people everyone usually has access. Then you hire developer #6, he messes something up in production... and now nobody has access. That is how it always starts in small dev teams. I think just about every rule of life there is gets created this way. One person messes it up for the rest of us. Rules are then put in place to try and prevent it from happening again.Breaking the rules is in our nature. In this example it is for good cause and a necessity to support our applications and troubleshoot problems as they arise. So how do developers typically break the rules? Some create their own method to collect log files off servers so they can see them. Expensive log management programs can collect log files, but log files alone are not enough. Centralizing where important errors are logged to is common. Some lucky developers are given production server access by the IT operations team out of necessity. Wait. That's not fair to all developers and knowingly breaks the company rule!  When customers complain or the system is down, the rules go out the window. Commonly lead developers get production access because they are ultimately responsible for supporting the application and may be the only person who knows how to fix it. The problem with only giving lead developers production access is it doesn't scale from a support standpoint. Those key employees become the go to people to help solve application problems, but they also become a bottleneck. They end up spending up to half of their time every day helping resolve application defects, performance problems, or whatever the fire of the day is. This actually the last thing you want your lead developers doing. They should be working on something more strategic like major enhancements to the product. Having production access can actually be a curse if you are the guy stuck hunting down log files all day. Application defects are good tasks for junior developers. They can usually handle figuring out simple application problems. But nothing is worse than being a junior developer who can't figure out those problems and the back log of them grows and grows. Some of them require production server access to verify a deployment was done correctly, verify config settings, view log files, or maybe just restart an application. Since the junior developers don't have access, they end up bugging the developers who do have access or they track down a system admin to help. It can take hours or days to see server information that would take seconds or minutes if they had access of their own. It is very frustrating to the developer trying to solve the problem, the system admin being forced to help, and most importantly your customers who are not happy about the situation. This process is terribly inefficient. Production database access is also important for solving application problems, but presents a lot of risk if developers are given access. They could see data they shouldn't.  They could write queries on accident to update data, delete data, or merely select every record from every table and bring your database to its knees. Since most of the application we create are data driven, it can be very difficult to track down application bugs without access to the production databases.Besides it being against the rule, why don't all developers have access? Most of the time it comes down to security, change of control, lack of training, and other valid reasons. Developers have been known to tinker with different settings to try and solve a problem and in the process forget what they changed and made the problem worse. So it is a double edge sword. Don't give them access and fixing bugs is more difficult, or give them access and risk having more bugs or major outages being created!Matt WatsonFounder, CEOStackifyAgile Support for Agile Developers

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• Antenna Aligner Part 7: Connecting the dots

  - by Chris George

  The app is basically ready, so I eagerly started to sort out creating the application entry in iTunes Connect. It's mostly intuitive actually, although I did have to create yet another icon for iTunes sized 512x512 pixels, damn lucky I did the original graphics as vector! It took me longer to write the application description than anything else, I'm so not a tech author! I didn't like the way you have to 'make up' an SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) number. I have to do some googling to find out that it really doesn't matter what it is! It should be more obvious what to do from the actual website itself. That aside, the rest of it was actually fairly straightforward. As well as the details of the application, iPhone and iPad screenshots were also required. This posed somewhat of a problem. The iPhone ones were easy (as I have one!), but I do not (yet) own an iPad . So I thought I'd leave the iPad screenshots out for now. Once the application details were sorted, I moved onto the rights and pricing. At the start of the project I had made the decision that I wouldn't charge any more than the lowest amount £0.59. I believe there is a market for this, but as my first foray into app development I didn't want to take the mick. I did realise, however, that I had built my app with a developer certificate and provisioning profile. This was fairly quickly corrected, and again Nomad made this very easy to switch over to the distribution certificate and provisioning profile. With a sense of excitement I cracked open iTunes connect and clicked the upload button ... ...slight snag... . when the Nomad project was started, Apple allowed uploads of these binaries via iTunes Connect. But this is no longer possible, the only upload path is via the Application Loader available from the Apple Developer program. This itself has one limitation, it only runs on a mac! D'OH!!!  Actually my language was somewhat more colourful when this fact came to light. After picking my laptop up off the floor and putting it back together... ok only joking, but I did nearly throw it out of frustration!... I started to consider the options; I briefly entertained the idea of buying a cheap mac from ebay... no, that defeats the whole object of what I'm doing, plus my wife wouldn't be impressed there are some guys out there in the interweb who will upload your app for a small fee...but I don't really like the idea of giving some faceless email address my apple developer login details, as well as my app binary! find some willing friend with a mac who would kindly let me use it... obviously this is the only sensible option. In the meantime, I informed the Nomad team about this slight 'issue' and they are currently investigating possible solutions...

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• How to recover after embarrassing yourself and your company?

  - by gaearon

  I work in an outsourcing company in Russia, and one of our clients is a financial company located in USA. For the last six months I have been working on several projects for this particular company, and as I was being assigned a larger project, I was invited to work onsite in USA in order to understand and learn the new system. Things didn't work out as well as I hoped because the environment was messy after original developers, and I had to spent quite some time to understand the quirks. However we managed to do the release several days ago, and it looks like everything's going pretty smooth. From technical perspective, my client seems to be happy with me. My solutions seem to work, and I always try to add some spark of creativity to what I do. However I'm very disorganized in a certain sense, as I believe many of you fellas are. Let me note that my current job is my first job ever, and I was lucky enough to get a job with flexible schedule, meaning I can come in and out of the office whenever I want as long as I have 40 hours a week filled. Sometimes I want to hang out with friends in the evening, and days after that I like to have a good sleep in the morning—this is why flexible schedule (or lack of one) is ideal fit for me. [I just realized this paragraph looks too serious, I should've decorated it with some UNICORNS!] Of course, after coming to the USA, things changed. This is not some software company with special treatment for the nerdy ones. Here you have to get up at 7:30 AM to get to the office by 9 AM and then sit through till 5 PM. Personally, I hate waking up in the morning, not to say my productivity begins to climb no sooner than at 5 o'clock, i.e. I'm very slow until I have to go, which is ironic. Sometimes I even stay for more than 8 hours just to finish my current stuff without interruptions. Anyway, I could deal with that. After all, they are paying for my trip, who am I to complain? They need me to be in their working hours to be able to discuss stuff. It makes perfect sense that fixed schedule doesn't make any sense for me. But it does makes sense that it does make sense for my client. And I am here for client, therefore sense is transferred. Awww, you got it. I was asked several times to come exactly at 9 AM but out of laziness and arrogance I didn't take these requests seriously enough. This paid off in the end—on my last day I woke up 10 minutes before final status meeting with business owner, having overslept previous day as well. Of course this made several people mad, including my client, as I ignored his direct request to come in time for two days in the row, including my final day. Of course, I didn't do it deliberately but certainly I could've ensured that I have at least two alarms to wake me up, et cetera...I didn't do that. He also emailed my boss, calling my behavior ridiculous and embarrassing for my company and saying “he's not happy with my professionalism at all”. My boss told me that “the system must work both in and out” and suggested me to stay till late night this day working in a berserker mode, fixing as many issues as possible, and sending a status email to my client. So I did, but I didn't receive the response yet. These are my questions to the great programmers community: Did you have situations where your ignorance and personal non-technical faults created problems for your company? Were you able to make up for your fault and stay in a good relationship with your client or boss? How? How would you act if you were in my situation?

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• How the SPARC T4 Processor Optimizes Throughput Capacity: A Case Study

  - by Ruud

  This white paper demonstrates the architected latency hiding features of Oracle’s UltraSPARC T2+ and SPARC T4 processors That is the first sentence from this technical white paper, but what does it exactly mean? Let's consider a very simple example, the computation of a = b + c. This boils down to the following (pseudo-assembler) instructions that need to be executed: load @b, r1 load @c, r2 add r1,r2,r3 store r3, @a The first two instructions load variables b and c from an address in memory (here symbolized by @b and @c respectively). These values go into registers r1 and r2. The third instruction adds the values in r1 and r2. The result goes into register r3. The fourth instruction stores the contents of r3 into the memory address symbolized by @a. If we're lucky, both b and c are in a nearby cache and the load instructions only take a few processor cycles to execute. That is the good case, but what if b or c, or both, have to come from very far away? Perhaps both of them are in the main memory and then it easily takes hundreds of cycles for the values to arrive in the registers. Meanwhile the processor is doing nothing and simply waits for the data to arrive. Actually, it does something. It burns cycles while waiting. That is a waste of time and energy. Why not use these cycles to execute instructions from another application or thread in case of a parallel program? That is exactly what latency hiding on the SPARC T-Series processors does. It is a hardware feature totally transparent to the user and application. As soon as there is a delay in the execution, the hardware uses these otherwise idle cycles to execute instructions from another process. As a result, the throughput capacity of the system improves because idle cycles are no longer wasted and therefore more jobs can be run per unit of time. This feature has been in the SPARC T-series from the beginning, so why this paper? The difference with previous publications on this topic is in the amount of detail given. How this all works under the hood is fully explained using two example programs. Starting from the assembly language instructions, it is demonstrated in what way these programs execute. To really see what is happening we go down to the processor pipeline level, where the gaps in the execution are, and show in what way these idle cycles are filled by other copies of the same program running simultaneously. Both the SPARC T4 as well as the older UltraSPARC T2+ processor are covered. You may wonder why the UltraSPARC T2+ is included. The focus of this work is on the SPARC T4 processor, but to explain the basic concept of latency hiding at this very low level, we start with the UltraSPARC T2+ processor because it is architecturally a much simpler design. From the single issue, in-order pipelines of this processor we then shift gears and cover how this all works on the much more advanced dual issue, out-of-order architecture of the T4. The analysis and performance experiments have been conducted on both processors. The results depend on the processor, but in all cases the theoretical estimates are confirmed by the experiments. If you're interested to read a lot more about this and find out how things really work under the hood, you can download a copy of the paper here. A paper like this could not have been produced without the help of several other people. I want to thank the co-author of this paper, Jared Smolens, for his very valuable contributions and our highly inspiring discussions. I'm also indebted to Thomas Nau (Ulm University, Germany), Shane Sigler and Mark Woodyard (both at Oracle) for their feedback on earlier versions of this paper. Karen Perkins (Perkins Technical Writing and Editing) and Rick Ramsey at Oracle were very helpful in providing editorial and publishing assistance.

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• Microsoft Certifications &ndash; how to prep? and why?

  - by Kelly Jones

  I often get asked by my colleagues, “how do you prepare for Microsoft exams?” Well, the answer for me is a little complicated, so I thought I’d write up here what I do. The first thing I do is go to Microsoft’s website to find the exam that I need to take.  If you’re looking to get a particular certification, then their site lists the exam or exams that you’ll need to pass.  If you’ve already taken an exam, you can log onto the MCP website and use their certification planner.  This little tool tells you what tests you need, based on the exams you’ve already passed.  It is very helpful with the certifications that are multiple tests and especially ones that have electives. Once you’ve identified the test, you can use Microsoft’s website to see the topics that it covers.  This is a good outline to follow when you study.  I’ll keep this handy to reference back throughout my studying to make sure that I’m covering all the topics I need to know. The next step is probably where I am a little different from others.  IF the exam outline covers material that I’ve already been working with, then I’ll skip a lot of the studying and go directly to the practice tests.  However, if I’m looking at the outline and wondering how in the world do you do that? – then it’s time to hit the books. So, where to find study materials?  Try typing in the exam number into any search engine.  You’ll typically find a ton of resources.  If you’re lucky, you’ll find books that others recommend based on their studying and exam experience.  As a Sogeti employee, I have access to three really good resources: an internal company list of all of the consultants who have passed particular tests (on our Connex website), Books 24x7, and Transcender practice exams. Once my studying is done (either through books or experience), I’ll go through the practice exams.  I find them really helpful in getting my knowledge lined up to the thinking process that the exam writers use.  If I’m relying on my experience, then this really helps me to identify gaps in my knowledge that I’ll need to fill. That’s about it.  If I’m doing ok on the practice exams, then I’ll take the real thing.  I’ve found that the practice exams are usually more difficult than then real thing. Oh – one other thing I do related to Microsoft exams – I try to take any beta exams that Microsoft makes available that fall into my skill set.  Microsoft has started a blog to announce these and the seats usually fill up really quick.  The blog is at http://blogs.technet.com/betaexams/ . You don’t get your results instantly, like a normal exam, instead you have to wait for everyone to finish taking the beta exams and for Microsoft to determine which questions they are using and which they are dropping.  So, be prepared to wait six to eight weeks for your results.

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• Build 2012, the first post

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  Yes, I was one of the lucky few who made it to Build. Build, formerly known as the Professional Developers Conference (or PDC) is the place to be if you are a developer on the Microsoft platform. Since I take my job seriously I took out some time on my busy schedule, sighed at the thought of not seeing my family for another week and signed up for it. Now, before I talk about the amazing Surface devices (yes, this posting is written on one of them), the great Lumia 920 we all got, the long deserved love for touch, NUI and other things I have been talking about for years, I need to do some ranting. So if you are anxious to read about the technical goodies you’ll have to wait until the next post. Still here? Good. When I signed up for the Build conference during my holidays this summer it was pretty obvious that demand would be high. Therefor I made sure I was on time. But even though I registered only 7 minutes after the initial opening time the Early Bird discount for the first 500 attendees was already sold out. I later learned that registration actually started 5 minutes before the scheduled time but even though it is still impressive how fast things went. The whole event sold out in 57 minutes Or so they say… A lot of people got put on the waiting list. There was room for about 1500 attendees and I heard that at least 1000 people were on that waiting list, including a lot of people I know. Strangely, all of them got tickets assigned after 2 weeks. Here at the conference I heard from a guy from Nokia that they had shipped 2500 Lumia 920 phones. That number matches the rumors that the organization added 1000 extra tickets. This, of course is no problem. I am not an elitist and I think large crowds have a special atmosphere that I quite like. But…. The Microsoft Campus is not equipped for that sheer volume of visitors. That was painfully obvious during on-site registration where people had to stand in line for over 2 hours. The conference is spread out over 2 buildings, divided by a 15 minute busride (yes, the campus is that big). I have seen queues of over 200 people waiting for the bus and when that arrived it had a capacity of 16. I can assure you: that doesn’t fit. This of course means that travelling from one site to the other might take about 30 minutes. So you arrive at the session room just in time, only to find out it’s full. Since you can’ get into that session you try to find another one but now you’re even more late so you have no chance at all of entering. The doors are closed and you’re told: “Well, you can watch the live stream online”. Mmmm… So I spend thousands of dollars, a week away from home, family and work to be told I can also watch the sessions online? Are you fricking kidding me? I could go on but I won’t. You get the idea. It’s jus badly organized, something I am not really used to in my 20 years of experience at Microsoft events. Yes, I am disappointed. I hope a lot of people here in Redmond will also fill in the evals and that the organization next year will do a better job. Really, Build deserves better. </rantmode>

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• Antenna Aligner Part 7: Connecting the dots

  - by Chris George

  The app is basically ready, so I eagerly started to sort out creating the application entry in iTunes Connect. It's mostly intuitive actually, although I did have to create yet another icon for iTunes sized 512x512 pixels, damn lucky I did the original graphics as vector! It took me longer to write the application description than anything else, I'm so not a tech author! I didn't like the way you have to 'make up' an SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) number. I have to do some googling to find out that it really doesn't matter what it is! It should be more obvious what to do from the actual website itself. That aside, the rest of it was actually fairly straightforward. As well as the details of the application, iPhone and iPad screenshots were also required. This posed somewhat of a problem. The iPhone ones were easy (as I have one!), but I do not (yet) own an iPad . So I thought I'd leave the iPad screenshots out for now. Once the application details were sorted, I moved onto the rights and pricing. At the start of the project I had made the decision that I wouldn't charge any more than the lowest amount £0.59. I believe there is a market for this, but as my first foray into app development I didn't want to take the mick. I did realise, however, that I had built my app with a developer certificate and provisioning profile. This was fairly quickly corrected, and again Nomad made this very easy to switch over to the distribution certificate and provisioning profile. With a sense of excitement I cracked open iTunes connect and clicked the upload button ... ...slight snag... . when the Nomad project was started, Apple allowed uploads of these binaries via iTunes Connect. But this is no longer possible, the only upload path is via the Application Loader available from the Apple Developer program. This itself has one limitation, it only runs on a mac! D'OH!!!  Actually my language was somewhat more colourful when this fact came to light. After picking my laptop up off the floor and putting it back together... ok only joking, but I did nearly throw it out of frustration!... I started to consider the options; I briefly entertained the idea of buying a cheap mac from ebay... no, that defeats the whole object of what I'm doing, plus my wife wouldn't be impressed there are some guys out there in the interweb who will upload your app for a small fee...but I don't really like the idea of giving some faceless email address my apple developer login details, as well as my app binary! find some willing friend with a mac who would kindly let me use it... obviously this is the only sensible option. In the meantime, I informed the Nomad team about this slight 'issue' and they are currently investigating possible solutions...

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• News From EAP Testing

  - by Fatherjack

  There is a phrase that goes something like “Watch the pennies and the pounds/dollars will take care of themselves”, meaning that if you pay attention to the small things then the larger things are going to fare well too. I am lucky enough to be a Friend of Red Gate and once in a while I get told about new features in their tools and have a test copy of the software to trial. I got one of those emails a week or so ago and I have been exploring the SQL Prompt 6 EAP since then. One really useful feature of long standing in SQL Prompt is the idea of a code snippet that is automatically pasted into the SSMS editor when you type a few key letters. For example I can type “ssf” and then press the tab key and the text is expanded to SELECT * FROM. There are lots of these combinations and it is possible to create your own really easily. To create your own you use the Snippet Manager interface to define the shortcut letters and the code that you want to have put in their place. Let’s look at an example. Say I am writing a blog about something and want to have the demo code create a temporary table. It might looks like this; The first time you run the code everything is fine, a lovely set of dates fill the results grid but run it a second time and this happens.   Yep, we didn’t destroy the temporary table so the CREATE statement fails when it finds the table already exists. No matter, I have a snippet created that takes care of this.   Nothing too technical here but you will see that in the Code section there is $CURSOR$, this isn’t a TSQL keyword but a marker for SQL Prompt to place the cursor in that position when the Code is pasted into the SSMS Editor. I just place my cursor above the CREATE statement and type “ifobj” – the shortcut for my code to DROP the temporary table – which has been defined in the Snippet Manager as below. This means I am right-away ready to type the name of the offending table. Pretty neat and it’s been very useful in saving me lots of time over many years.   The news for SQL Prompt 6 is that Red Gate have added a new Snippet Command of $PASTE$. Let’s alter our snippet to the following and try it out   Once again, we will type type “ifobj” in the SSMS Editor but first of all, highlight the name of the table #TestTable and copy it to your clipboard. Now type “ifobj” and press Tab… Wherever the string $PASTE$ is placed in the snippet, the contents of your clipboard are merged into the pasted TSQL. This means I don’t need to type the table name into the code snippet, it’s already there and I am seeing a fully functioning piece of TSQL ready to run. This means it is it even easier to write TSQL quickly and consistently. Attention to detail like this from Red Gate means that their developer tools stay on track to keep winning awards year after year and help take the hard work out of writing neat, accurate TSQL. If you want to try out SQL Prompt all the details are at http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-prompt/.

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• Representing Mauritius in the 2013 Bench Games

  Only by chance I came across an interesting option for professionals and enthusiasts in IT, and quite honestly I can't even remember where I caught attention of Brainbench and their 2013 Bench Games event. But having access to 600+ free exams in a friendly international intellectual competition doesn't happen to be available every day. So, it was actually a no-brainer to sign up and browse through the various categories. Most interestingly, Brainbench is not only IT-related. They offer a vast variety of fields in their Test Center, like Languages and Communication, Office Skills, Management, Aptitude, etc., and it can be a little bit messy about how things are organised. Anyway, while browsing through their test offers I added a couple of exams to 'My Plan' which I would give a shot afterwards. Self-assessments Actually, I took the tests based on two major aspects: 'Fun Factor' and 'How good would I be in general'... Usually, you have to pay for any kind of exams and given this unique chance by Brainbench to simply train this kind of tests was already worth the time. Frankly speaking, the tests are very close to the ones you would be asked to do at Prometric or Pearson Vue, ie. Microsoft exams, etc. Go through a set of multiple choice questions in a given time frame. Most of the tests I did during the Bench Games were based on 40 questions, each with a maximum of 3 minutes to answer. Ergo, one test in maximum 2 hours - that sounds feasible, doesn't it? The Measure of Achievement While the 2013 Bench Games are considered a worldwide friendly competition of knowledge I was really eager to get other Mauritians attracted. Using various social media networks and community activities it all looked quite well at the beginning. Mauritius was listed on rank #19 of Most Certified Citizens and rank #10 of Most Master Level Certified Nation - not bad, not bad... Until... the next update of the Bench Games Leaderboard. The downwards trend seemed to be unstoppable and I couldn't understand why my results didn't show up on the Individual Leader Board. First of all, I passed exams that were not even listed and second, I had better results on some exams listed. After some further information from the organiser it turned out that my test transcript wasn't available to the public. Only then results are considered and counted in the competition. During that time, I actually managed to hold 3 test results on the Individuals... Other participants were merciless, eh, more successful than me, produced better test results than I did. But still I managed to stay on the final score board: An 'exotic' combination of exam, test result, country and person itself Representing Mauritius and the Visual FoxPro community in that fun event. And although I mainly develop in Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP2 and C# using .NET Framework from 2.0 to 4.5 since a couple of years I still managed to pass on Master Level. Hm, actually my Microsoft Certified Programmer (MCP) exams are dated back in June 2004 - more than 9 years ago... Look who got lucky... As described above I did a couple of exams as time allowed and without any preparations, but still I received the following mail notification: "Thank you for recently participating in our Bench Games event.  We wanted to inform you that you obtained a top score on our test(s) during this event, and as a result, will receive a free annual Brainbench subscription.  Your annual subscription will give you access to all our tests just like Bench Games, but for an entire year plus additional benefits!" -- Leader Board Notification from Brainbench Even fun activities get rewarded sometimes. Thanks to @Brainbench_com for the free annual subscription based on my passed 2013 Bench Games Master Level exam. It would be interesting to know about the total figures, especially to see how many citizens of Mauritius took part in this year's Bench Games. Anyway, I'm looking forward to be able to participate in other challenges like this in the future.

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• Don’t string together XML

  - by KyleBurns

  XML has been a pervasive tool in software development for over a decade.  It provides a way to communicate data in a manner that is simple to understand and free of platform dependencies.  Also pervasive in software development is what I consider to be the anti-pattern of using string manipulation to create XML.  This usually starts with a “quick and dirty” approach because you need an XML document and looks like (for all of the examples here, we’ll assume we’re writing the body of a method intended to take a Contact object and return an XML string): return string.Format("<Contact><BusinessName>{0}</BusinessName></Contact>", contact.BusinessName);   In the code example, I created (or at least believe I created) an XML document representing a simple contact object in one line of code with very little overhead.  Work’s done, right?  No it’s not.  You see, what I didn’t realize was that this code would be used in the real world instead of my fantasy world where I own all the data and can prevent any of it containing problematic values.  If I use this code to create a contact record for the business “Sanford & Son”, any XML parser will be incapable of processing the data because the ampersand is special in XML and should have been encoded as &amp;. Following the pattern that I have seen many times over, my next step as a developer is going to be to do what any developer in his right mind would do – instruct the user that ampersands are “bad” and they cannot be used without breaking computers.  This may work in many cases and is often accompanied by logic at the UI layer of applications to block these “bad” characters, but sooner or later someone is going to figure out that other applications allow for them and will want the same.  This often leads to the creation of “cleaner” functions that perform a replace on the strings for every special character that the person writing the function can think of.  The cleaner function will usually grow over time as support requests reveal characters that were missed in the initial cut.  Sooner or later you end up writing your own somewhat functional XML engine. I have never been told by anyone paying me to write code that they would like to buy a somewhat functional XML engine.  My employer/customer’s needs have always been for something that may use XML, but ultimately is functionality that drives business value. I’m not going to build an XML engine. So how can I generate XML that is always well-formed without writing my own engine?  Easy – use one of the ones provided to you for free!  If you’re in a shop that still supports VB6 applications, you can use the DomDocument or MXXMLWriter object (of the two I prefer MXXMLWriter, but I’m not going to fully describe either here).  For .Net Framework applications prior to the 3.5 framework, the code is a little more verbose than I would like, but easy once you understand what pieces are required:             using (StringWriter sw = new StringWriter())             {                 using (XmlTextWriter writer = new XmlTextWriter(sw))                 {                     writer.WriteStartDocument();                     writer.WriteStartElement("Contact");                     writer.WriteElementString("BusinessName", contact.BusinessName);                     writer.WriteEndElement(); // end Contact element                     writer.WriteEndDocument();                     writer.Flush();                     return sw.ToString();                 }             }   Looking at that code, it’s easy to understand why people are drawn to the initial one-liner.  Lucky for us, the 3.5 .Net Framework added the System.Xml.Linq.XElement object.  This object takes away a lot of the complexity present in the XmlTextWriter approach and allows us to generate the document as follows: return new XElement("Contact", new XElement("BusinessName", contact.BusinessName)).ToString();   While it is very common for people to use string manipulation to create XML, I’ve discussed here reasons not to use this method and introduced powerful APIs that are built into the .Net Framework as an alternative.  I’ve given a very simplistic example here to highlight the most basic XML generation task.  For more information on the XmlTextWriter and XElement APIs, check out the MSDN library.

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• Running lmgrd on ubuntu 14.04 LTS

  - by SumanBhatR

  I have installed Xilinx 14.7 in ubuntu 14.04 LTS machine(i386 - 64bit). But I am unable to run lmgrd (for starting the license server). When I googled this problem, I found that lsb-core package needs to be installed. But the package is having many dependencies, I want to know how to install lsb-core package with all the necessary dependencies. Thanks for the help On running sudo apt-get install lsb-core I got the following output Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Package lsb-core is not available, but is referred to by another package. This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or is only available from another source E: Package 'lsb-core' has no installation candidate So I downloaded lsb-core package from http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/misc/lsb-core site and used "sudo dpkg -i ./lsb-core_4.1+Debian11ubuntu6_i386.deb" to install it By doing it, I got the following output Selecting previously unselected package lsb-core. (Reading database ... 163205 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack .../lsb-core_4.1+Debian11ubuntu6_i386.deb ... Unpacking lsb-core (4.1+Debian11ubuntu6) ... dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of lsb-core: lsb-core depends on libc6 ( 2.3.5). lsb-core depends on libz1. lsb-core depends on libncurses5. lsb-core depends on libpam0g. lsb-core depends on lsb-invalid-mta (= 4.1+Debian11ubuntu6) | mail-transport-agent. lsb-core depends on at. lsb-core depends on binutils. lsb-core depends on cron | cron-daemon. lsb-core depends on libc6-dev | libc-dev. lsb-core depends on locales. lsb-core depends on m4. lsb-core depends on mailx | mailutils. lsb-core depends on ncurses-term. lsb-core depends on pax. lsb-core depends on psmisc. lsb-core depends on alien (= 8.36). lsb-core depends on python3. lsb-core depends on lsb-security (= 4.1+Debian11ubuntu6). lsb-core depends on time. dpkg: error processing package lsb-core (--install): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Processing triggers for man-db (2.6.7.1-1) ... Errors were encountered while processing: lsb-core So I want to know how to install lsb-core package with all the necessary dependencies in one go. Thanks for the help

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• Developer’s Life – Every Developer is a Captain America

  - by Pinal Dave

  Captain America was first created as a comic book character in the 1940’s as a way to boost morale during World War II.  Aimed at a children’s audience, his legacy faded away when the war ended.  However, he has recently has a major reboot to become a popular movie character that deals with modern issues. When Captain America was first written, there was no such thing as a developer, programmer or a computer (the way we think of them, anyway).  Despite these limitations, I think there are still a lot of ways that modern Captain America is like modern developers. So how are developers like Captain America? Well, read on my list of reasons. Take on Big Projects Captain America isn’t afraid to take on big projects – and takes responsibility when the project is co-opted by the evil organization HYDRA.  Developers may not have super villains out there corrupting their work, but they know to keep on top of their projects and own what they do. Elderly Wisdom Steve Rogers, Captain America’s alter ego, was frozen in ice for decades, and brought back to life to solve problems. Developers can learn from this by respecting the opinions of their elders – technology is an ever-changing market, but the old-timers still have a few tricks up their sleeves! Don’t be Afraid of Change Don’t be afraid of change.  Captain America woke up to find the world he was accustomed to is now completely different.  He might have even felt his skills were no longer necessary.  He, and developers, know that everyone has their place in a team, though.  If you try your best, you will make it work. Fight Your Own Battle Sometimes you have to make it on your own.  Captain America is an integral part of the Avengers, but in his own movies, the other superheroes aren’t around to back him up.  Developers, too, must learn to work both within and with out a team. Solid Integrity One of Captain America’s greatest qualities is his integrity.  His determine to do what is right, keep his word, and act honestly earns him mockery from some of the less-savory characters – even “good guys” like Iron Man.  Developers, and everyone else, need to develop the strength of character to keep their integrity.  No matter your walk of life, there will be tempting obstacles.  Think of Captain America, and say “no.” There is a lot for all of us to learn from Captain America, to take away in our own lives, and admire in those who display it – I am specifically thinking of developers.  If you are enjoying this series as much as I am, please let me know who else you would like to see featured. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Developer, Superhero

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• SQL SERVER – Size of Index Table for Each Index – Solution 3 – Powershell

  - by pinaldave

  Laerte Junior If you are a Powershell user, the name of the Laerte Junior is not a new name. He is the one man with exceptional knowledge of Powershell. He is not only very knowledgeable, but also very kind and eager to those in need. I have been attempting to setup Powershell for many days, but constantly facing issues. I was not able to get going with this tool. Finally, yesterday I sent email to Laerte in response to his comment posted here. Within 5 minutes, Laerte came online and helped me with the solution. He spend nearly 15 minutes working along with me to solve my problem with installation. And yes, he did resolve it remotely without looking at my screen – What a skilled and exceptional person!! I will soon post a detail note about the issue I faced and resolved with the help of Laerte. Here is his solution to my earlier puzzle in his own words. Read the original puzzle here and Laerte’s solution from here. Hi Pinal, I do not say better, but maybe another approach to enthusiasts in powershell and SQLSPX library would be: 1 – All indexes in all tables and all databases Get-SqlDatabase -sqlserver “Yourserver” | Get-SqlTable | Get-SqlIndex | Format-table Server,dbname,schema,table,name,id,spaceused 2 – All Indexes in all tables and specific database Get-SqlDatabase -sqlserver “Yourserver” “Yourdb” | Get-SqlTable | Get-SqlIndex | Format-table Server,dbname,schema,table,name,id,spaceused 3 – All Indexes in specific table and database Get-SqlDatabase -sqlserver “Yourserver” “Yourdb” | Get-SqlTable “YourTable” | Get-SqlIndex | Format-table Server,dbname,schema,table,name,id,spaceused and to output to txt.. pipe Out-File Get-SqlDatabase -sqlserver “Yourserver” | Get-SqlTable | Get-SqlIndex | Format-table Server,dbname,schema,table,name,id,spaceused | out-file c:\IndexesSize.txt If you have one txt with all your servers, can be for all of them also. Lets say you have all your servers in servers.txt: something like NameServer1 NameServer2 NameServer3 NameServer4 We could Use : foreach ($Server in Get-content c:\temp\servers.txt) { Get-SqlDatabase -sqlserver $Server | Get-SqlTable | Get-SqlIndex | Format-table Server,dbname,schema,table,name,id,spaceused } :) After fixing my issue with Powershell, I ran Laerte‘s second suggestion – “All Indexes in all tables and specific database” and found the following accurate output. Click to Enlarge Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Powershell

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• SQL SERVER – Size of Index Table for Each Index – Solution 3 – Powershell

  - by pinaldave

  Laerte Junior If you are a Powershell user, the name of the Laerte Junior is not a new name. He is the one man with exceptional knowledge of Powershell. He is not only very knowledgeable, but also very kind and eager to those in need. I have been attempting to setup Powershell for many days, but constantly facing issues. I was not able to get going with this tool. Finally, yesterday I sent email to Laerte in response to his comment posted here. Within 5 minutes, Laerte came online and helped me with the solution. He spend nearly 15 minutes working along with me to solve my problem with installation. And yes, he did resolve it remotely without looking at my screen – What a skilled and exceptional person!! I will soon post a detail note about the issue I faced and resolved with the help of Laerte. Here is his solution to my earlier puzzle in his own words. Read the original puzzle here and Laerte’s solution from here. Hi Pinal, I do not say better, but maybe another approach to enthusiasts in powershell and SQLSPX library would be: 1 – All indexes in all tables and all databases Get-SqlDatabase -sqlserver “Yourserver” | Get-SqlTable | Get-SqlIndex | Format-table Server,dbname,schema,table,name,id,spaceused 2 – All Indexes in all tables and specific database Get-SqlDatabase -sqlserver “Yourserver” “Yourdb” | Get-SqlTable | Get-SqlIndex | Format-table Server,dbname,schema,table,name,id,spaceused 3 – All Indexes in specific table and database Get-SqlDatabase -sqlserver “Yourserver” “Yourdb” | Get-SqlTable “YourTable” | Get-SqlIndex | Format-table Server,dbname,schema,table,name,id,spaceused and to output to txt.. pipe Out-File Get-SqlDatabase -sqlserver “Yourserver” | Get-SqlTable | Get-SqlIndex | Format-table Server,dbname,schema,table,name,id,spaceused | out-file c:\IndexesSize.txt If you have one txt with all your servers, can be for all of them also. Lets say you have all your servers in servers.txt: something like NameServer1 NameServer2 NameServer3 NameServer4 We could Use : foreach ($Server in Get-content c:\temp\servers.txt) { Get-SqlDatabase -sqlserver $Server | Get-SqlTable | Get-SqlIndex | Format-table Server,dbname,schema,table,name,id,spaceused } :) After fixing my issue with Powershell, I ran Laerte‘s second suggestion – “All Indexes in all tables and specific database” and found the following accurate output. Click to Enlarge Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Powershell

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• Emperors don’t come cheap

  - by RoyOsherove

  “Sorry” I replied in a polite email. “Maybe next year, when budgets allow for this”. It was addressed to the organizer of TechEd US, which was to be in New Orleans this year. Man, I would have loved to be in new Orleans this year, but, I guess these guys only understand one language – and I won’t be their puppy any more. You see, they wouldn’t pay for my business class flight to TechEd from Israel. Me– the great emperor of unit testing?! travelling coach for 12 hours? No thanks. I have better things to do! And this is after last year, they only invited me to have one talk throughout the conference. one talk. After the year before I was on the top ten speakers list of that conference?! No sir! They did give it a good try, though. They said they can pay up to 4,000$ per flight cost for me, and that they only found a flight at about 5460$. “Unacceptable” I told them when they asked if I would pay the difference. And that was that. Goodbye teched. As I closed up gmail, wondering if I should have told them that I found a similar flight at 4,300$, and came back to the living room, I told my wife, all full of myself “I just canceled teched”. “Oh good” she said. Not even looking at me as she tried to feed our one year old. “did you tell them you need to cancel because you already have another flight that month and your wife won’t let you travel more than once a month anymore?” “Yeah right” I said. Just what I need – for people to realize I’m totally whipped. I still need an ounce of dignity. “I told those bastards that if they want me they have to make an effort. People like me don’t come cheap, you know?” “You’re an idiot for not telling them the real reason.” She handed me the baby.  “What if they found a flight that matches their budget? How would you have gotten away from that engagement?” . She put on “Lost” on the media center and sat next to me. I did not reply.

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• Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework Review

  - by Ben Griswold

  Early in my career, when I wanted to learn a new technology, I’d sit in the bookstore aisle and I’d work my way through each of the available books on the given subject.  Put in enough time in a bookstore and you can learn just about anything. I used to really enjoy my time in the bookstore – but times have certainly changed.  Whereas books used to be the only place I could find solutions to my problems, now they may be the very last place I look.  I have been working with the ASP.NET MVC Framework for more than a year.  I have a few projects and a couple of major deployments under my belt and I was able to get up to speed with the framework without reading a single book*.  With so many resources at our fingertips (podcasts, screencasts, blogs, stackoverflow, open source projects, www.asp.net, you name it) why bother with a book? Well, I flipped through Steven Sanderson’s Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework a few months ago. And since it is prominently displayed in my co-worker’s office, I tend to pick it up as a reference from time to time.  Last week, I’m not sure why, I decided to read it cover to cover.  Man, did I eat this book up.  Granted, a lot of what I read was review, but it was only review because I had already learned lessons by piecing the puzzle together for myself via various sources. If I were starting with ASP.NET MVC (or ASP.NET Web Deployment in general) today, the first thing I would do is buy Steven Sanderson’s Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework and read it cover to cover. Steven Sanderson did such a great job with this book! As much as I appreciated the in-depth model, view, and controller talk, I was completely impressed with all the extra bits which were included.  There a was nice overview of BDD, view engine comparisons, a chapter dedicated to security and vulnerabilities, IoC, TDD and Mocking (of course), IIS deployment options and a nice overview of what the .NET platform and C# offers.  Heck, Sanderson even include bits about webforms! The book is fantastic and I highly recommend it – even if you think you’ve already got your head around ASP.NET MVC.  By the way, procrastinators may be in luck.  ASP.NET MVC V2 Framework can be pre-ordered.  You might want to jump right into the second edition and find out what Sanderson has to say about MVC 2. * Actually, I did read through the free bits of Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0.  But it was just a chapter – albeit a really long chapter.

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• Back home :-)

  - by Mike Dietrich

  Wrote this entry last night in the ICE from Stuttgart to Munich but the conncetion broke: 28.5 hour journey - and close by now. Actually I would have been even closer if our TGV wouldn't have had break problems as soon as we had entered German territory. And you don't want a train which goes up to a speed of 200 mph having issues with its breaks, right? So we missed the connection in Stuttgart but I've catched the last train this night towards Munich. Distance approx 1900 km all together. Usually it takes 2.5 hours with a direct flight with Air Lingus from Munich or a bit more when you'll go through Zurich or Frankfurt. But at least you meet more people and see a bit more from the landscapes passing by :-) Except for the break problem everything worked out well so far (I'm no there finally!). I had 4 hours to change in Paris from Gare de Nord to Gare de l'Est and one thing I really have to point out: the people working for SNCF, the French National Railways, were so organized and helpful, purely amazing. I asked the man at the counter where I had to pick up my prepaid tickets for directions to Gare de l'Est - and after we had a chat about Marlene Dietrich he just grabbed his iPhone, started Google Earth and showed me the way to walk. I pretty sure it's a stupid stereotype that people in Paris or France are so unfriendly to foreigners if they don't speak French. In my past 3 stays or travels to Paris in the past 2 years I had only great experiences. And another thing I really enjoy when being in France: the food!!! The sandwich I had at the train station was packed with yummy goat cheese. And there's always Paul. You might ask yourself: Who the heck is Paul? That's Paul - or actually their website. And at Paul's they serve usually excellent fruit tartes - and this time a nice Gateau Au Chocolate. And very good Cafe Cremé as well :-) That's actually the positive part traveling this way: the food you'll get is much better than the airline food - if your airline still serves something called food ...

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• How can I troubleshoot flash player/hardware conflict?

  - by sparthikas

  OBJECTIVE: Have a web browser on my Ubuntu install that can play youtube and hulu videos. Also would like to understand problem so that I can fix it again if I change software. Workarounds welcome, technical understanding and solution preferable. SYMPTOMS: Flash does not run - cannot make the right-click menu appear, an empty box is where video should be, changes to black box when hovering over other links. The "The Adobe Flash plugin has crashed" message does not appear with its sad lego face. cannot activate proprietary graphics driver - causes system to reboot to a prompt. SOLUTIONS TRIED: Replaced OS (tried slackware 13.37, fedora 17, linuxmint 13 maya, gentoo, lubuntu, and even winXP. lubuntu confirmed to work, don't remember how much tweaking, if any, this required. Slack, fedora, mint, and gentoo all failed to run flash just like ubuntu) many reinstalls of flash player via different methods, including cleaning up old installs first, also tried gnash and lightspark. replaced graphics card (replaced HIS IceQ Radeon HD 4670 AGP with older GeForce 5700 LE no change in problem) flash does successfully work on winXP installation with Catalyst AGP hotfix driver applied, however I consider windows wholly unacceptable for web browsing due to lack of security. Lubuntu install also works, however I do not want to be tied down to just using Lubuntu on this computer. SYSINFO: Have latest versions of Ubuntu, Firefox, and Flash on fresh Ubuntu install. Using Gigabyte 7s748 motherboard with Athlon XP 2800+ and 3 GB of RAM with Radeon HD 4670 AGP card, also a Dell soundblaster live series sound card (due to malfunction of onboard sound on motherboard) Wired internet connection, Maxtor 6Y120L3 HDD, Sony DVD RW AW-Q170A, Dell M993s monitor. NOTES: I do not know if the graphics driver issue and the flash troubles are linked. Substitution of older graphics card having same flash troubles seems to suggest they aren't. My troubleshooting method is rather reductionist, consisting mainly of "replace things until you find out what was causing the error by process of elimination" only it seems that this must be a conflict which arises when software decides how to configure itself on my hardware. That is, I know the hardware can run Flash, and I know that on other systems the same software can too, but somehow the combination fails. Consequently I feel out of my depth. I will keep trying things off and on, but I have spent probably about 30 man-hours in the last 4 months working on this problem with no joy other than the lubuntu workaround. Any help will be appreciated, I will be checking back and posting updates. Any pertinent questions regarding me or my computer will be answered, outputs from config files can be accessed and posted (IDK which ones or what parts to post).

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• How Microsoft listens

  - by Stacy Vicknair

  This being my freshman year as an MVP, I had a realization that I perhaps should be embarrassed hasn’t happened sooner. The realization comes much like the iconic M&Ms commercial where the M&Ms run into Santa and exclaim, “He does exist!” My personal realization arguably has a greater implication: Microsoft does listen. This is the most important lesson that I received this year attending the MVP Summit. My hope is that I can convince you that we are empowered to make a difference. Instead of using “Man I hate how this works / doesn’t work!” as cooler conversation, we can use it as true interaction with Microsoft. We as customers to Microsoft need to stop asking the question “Will this work for me?” and instead ask “How can this work for me?” There are three quick resources that the average developer has access to today that they can use to be heard by the product teams, and by no means should you think twice if you have a concern that you’d like a real response on. MVPs MVPs are members of your community who have a deep relationship with Microsoft and will have connections to their associated product group. Don’t think of them as just a resource for answers, but also as your ambassador for getting your experiences heard. You can find your local MVPs by browsing the directory at: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/communities/mvp.aspx Evangelists Evangelists are employees of Microsoft who work to foster and grow communities in their assigned region. They are first-class citizens of Microsoft and are often deeply involved with the product groups. As a result, they will be more than glad to direct your questions or concerns to those who can answer them most expertly. With that said, evangelists are also very busy people (who do amazing things for the community) and might not be able to get you that conversation as quickly as a local MVP. You can find your local evangelist at the following website: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/bb905078.aspx Microsoft Connect This is one of the resources that I haven’t used enough, but it cannot be understated. Connect is the starting point of the social conversation that happens between Microsoft and the community daily. Connect acts as a portal where you can provide new feedback as well as comment and rate the feedback provided by others. Power is in numbers when it comes to Connect, so the exposure that your feedback can get not only lets you know that you aren’t the only one who wants change, but also lets Microsoft know the same. https://connect.microsoft.com   Technorati Tags: Microsoft,MVP,Feedback,Connect

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• JCP.Next - Early Adopters of JCP 2.8

  - by Heather VanCura

  JCP.Next is a series of three JSRs (JSR 348, JSR 355 and JSR 358), to be defined through the JCP process itself, with the JCP Executive Committee serving as the Expert Group. The proposed JSRs will modify the JCP's processes  - the Process Document and Java Specification Participation Agreement (JSPA) and will apply to all new JSRs for all Java platforms.   The first - JCP.next.1, or more formally JSR 348, Towards a new version of the Java Community Process - was completed and put into effect in October 2011 as JCP 2.8. This focused on a small number of simple but important changes to make our process more transparent and to enable broader participation. We're already seeing the benefits of these changes as new and existing JSRs adopt the new requirements. The second - JSR 355, Executive Committee Merge, is also Final. You can read the JCP 2.9 Process Document .  As part of the JSR 355 Final Release, the JCP Executive Committee published revisions to the JCP Process Document (version 2.9) and the EC Standing Rules (version 2.2).  The changes went into effect following the 2012 EC Elections in November. The third JSR 358, A major revision of the Java Community Process was submitted in June 2012.  This JSR will modify the Java Specification Participation Agreement (JSPA) as well as the Process Document, and will tackle a large number of complex issues, many of them postponed from JSR 348. For these reasons, the JCP EC (acting as the Expert Group for this JSR), expects to spend a considerable amount of time working on. The JSPA is defined by the JCP as "a one-year, renewable agreement between the Member and Oracle. The success of the Java community depends upon an open and transparent JCP program.  JSR 358, A major revision of the Java Community Process, is now in process and can be followed on java.net. The following JSRs and Spec Leads were the early adopters of JCP 2.8, who voluntarily migrated their JSRs from JCP 2.x to JCP 2.8 or above.  More candidates for 2012 JCP Star Spec Leads! JSR 236, Concurrency Utilities for Java EE (Anthony Lai/Oracle), migrated April 2012 JSR 308, Annotations on Java Types (Michael Ernst, Alex Buckley/Oracle), migrated September 2012 JSR 335, Lambda Expressions for the Java Programming Language (Brian Goetz/Oracle), migrated October 2012 JSR 337, Java SE 8 Release Contents (Mark Reinhold/Oracle) – EG Formation, migrated September 2012 JSR 338, Java Persistence 2.1 (Linda DeMichiel/Oracle), migrated January 2012 JSR 339, JAX-RS 2.0: The Java API for RESTful Web Services (Santiago Pericas-Geertsen, Marek Potociar/Oracle), migrated July 2012 JSR 340, Java Servlet 3.1 Specification (Shing Wai Chan, Rajiv Mordani/Oracle), migrated August 2012 JSR 341, Expression Language 3.0 (Kin-man Chung/Oracle), migrated August 2012 JSR 343, Java Message Service 2.0 (Nigel Deakin/Oracle), migrated March 2012 JSR 344, JavaServer Faces 2.2 (Ed Burns/Oracle), migrated September 2012 JSR 345, Enterprise JavaBeans 3.2 (Marina Vatkina/Oracle), migrated February 2012 JSR 346, Contexts and Dependency Injection for Java EE 1.1 (Pete Muir/RedHat) – migrated December 2011

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• The Loneliest Road in America and the OTN Garage

  - by rickramsey

  Source I never told anyone how the image of the OTN Garage on Facebook came to be. I took the Facebook picture on Route 50 in Nevada, USA, in October of 2010. I was riding from Colorado to Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco, so it was probably October. Route 50 is known as "The Loneliest Road in America." There are roads across Nevada that have even LESS traffic, but Route 50 still one. desolate. road. Although I have seen stranger things while riding along Nevada's Extraterrestrial Highway, I still run across notable oddities every time I ride Route 50. Like the old man with a bandolero of water bottles jogging along the side of the highway in the middle of the day, 50 miles from the closest town. First ultra-marathoner I'd seen in action. He waved at me. Or the dozen Corvettes with California license plates driving toward me, all doing the speed limit in the middle of nowhere because they were being tailed by half a dozen Nevada state troopers. #fail. I don't remember which town I was in, but I noticed the building when I stopped at the gas station. While standing there pouring fuel into the Harley, the store caught my eye. So I pulled the bike in front and walked inside. The owner is a little old lady, about 100 years old. Most of the goods she had on the shelves looked like they had been placed there during WWII. She was itty bitty and could barely see over the counter, but she was so happy when I bought a bar of Hershey's chocolate that she gave me a five cent discount. I took a few pictures and, when I got back, Kemer Thomson, who sometimes blogs here, photoshopped the OTN Garage and Oil Change signs onto it. The bike is a 2009 Road King Classic with a Bob Dron fairing and a Corbin heated seat. The seat came in handy when I rode home over Tioga Pass. The Road King is a very comfy touring bike with a great Harley rumble. I'm kinda sorry I sold it. When I stopped for fuel about 75 miles down the road at the next town, I peeled back the chocolate bar. I had turned into powder. Probably 50 years ago. - Rick Website Newsletter Facebook Twitter

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• Can't install graphic drivers in 12.04

  - by yinon

  The driver is ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver. After clicking Activate, it asks for my password and starts downloading. Then it shows an error message: 2012-10-03 16:16:04,227 DEBUG: updating <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> 2012-10-03 16:16:06,172 DEBUG: reading modalias file /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/modules.alias 2012-10-03 16:16:06,383 DEBUG: reading modalias file /usr/share/jockey/modaliases/b43 2012-10-03 16:16:06,386 DEBUG: reading modalias file /usr/share/jockey/modaliases/disable-upstream-nvidia 2012-10-03 16:16:06,456 DEBUG: loading custom handler /usr/share/jockey/handlers/pvr-omap4.py 2012-10-03 16:16:06,506 WARNING: modinfo for module omapdrm_pvr failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module omapdrm_pvr 2012-10-03 16:16:06,509 DEBUG: Instantiated Handler subclass __builtin__.PVROmap4Driver from name PVROmap4Driver 2012-10-03 16:16:06,682 DEBUG: PowerVR SGX proprietary graphics driver for OMAP 4 not available 2012-10-03 16:16:06,682 DEBUG: loading custom handler /usr/share/jockey/handlers/cdv.py 2012-10-03 16:16:06,727 WARNING: modinfo for module cedarview_gfx failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module cedarview_gfx 2012-10-03 16:16:06,728 DEBUG: Instantiated Handler subclass __builtin__.CdvDriver from name CdvDriver 2012-10-03 16:16:06,728 DEBUG: cdv.available: falling back to default 2012-10-03 16:16:06,772 DEBUG: Intel Cedarview graphics driver availability undetermined, adding to pool 2012-10-03 16:16:06,772 DEBUG: loading custom handler /usr/share/jockey/handlers/vmware-client.py 2012-10-03 16:16:06,781 WARNING: modinfo for module vmxnet failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module vmxnet 2012-10-03 16:16:06,781 DEBUG: Instantiated Handler subclass __builtin__.VmwareClientHandler from name VmwareClientHandler 2012-10-03 16:16:06,795 DEBUG: VMWare Client Tools availability undetermined, adding to pool 2012-10-03 16:16:06,796 DEBUG: loading custom handler /usr/share/jockey/handlers/fglrx.py 2012-10-03 16:16:06,801 WARNING: modinfo for module fglrx_updates failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module fglrx_updates 2012-10-03 16:16:06,805 DEBUG: Instantiated Handler subclass __builtin__.FglrxDriverUpdate from name FglrxDriverUpdate 2012-10-03 16:16:06,805 DEBUG: fglrx.available: falling back to default 2012-10-03 16:16:06,833 DEBUG: ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver (post-release updates) availability undetermined, adding to pool 2012-10-03 16:16:06,836 WARNING: modinfo for module fglrx failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module fglrx 2012-10-03 16:16:06,840 DEBUG: Instantiated Handler subclass __builtin__.FglrxDriver from name FglrxDriver 2012-10-03 16:16:06,840 DEBUG: fglrx.available: falling back to default 2012-10-03 16:16:06,873 DEBUG: ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver availability undetermined, adding to pool 2012-10-03 16:16:06,873 DEBUG: loading custom handler /usr/share/jockey/handlers/dvb_usb_firmware.py 2012-10-03 16:16:06,925 DEBUG: Instantiated Handler subclass __builtin__.DvbUsbFirmwareHandler from name DvbUsbFirmwareHandler 2012-10-03 16:16:06,926 DEBUG: Firmware for DVB cards not available 2012-10-03 16:16:06,926 DEBUG: loading custom handler /usr/share/jockey/handlers/nvidia.py 2012-10-03 16:16:06,961 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_96 failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_96 2012-10-03 16:16:06,967 DEBUG: Instantiated Handler subclass __builtin__.NvidiaDriver96 from name NvidiaDriver96 2012-10-03 16:16:06,968 DEBUG: nvidia.available: falling back to default 2012-10-03 16:16:06,980 DEBUG: XorgDriverHandler(nvidia_96, nvidia-96, None): Disabling as package video ABI xorg-video-abi-10 does not match X.org video ABI xorg-video-abi-11 2012-10-03 16:16:06,980 DEBUG: NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver not available 2012-10-03 16:16:06,983 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_current failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_current 2012-10-03 16:16:06,987 DEBUG: Instantiated Handler subclass __builtin__.NvidiaDriverCurrent from name NvidiaDriverCurrent 2012-10-03 16:16:06,987 DEBUG: nvidia.available: falling back to default 2012-10-03 16:16:07,015 DEBUG: NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver availability undetermined, adding to pool 2012-10-03 16:16:07,018 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_current_updates failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_current_updates 2012-10-03 16:16:07,021 DEBUG: Instantiated Handler subclass __builtin__.NvidiaDriverCurrentUpdates from name NvidiaDriverCurrentUpdates 2012-10-03 16:16:07,022 DEBUG: nvidia.available: falling back to default 2012-10-03 16:16:07,066 DEBUG: NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (post-release updates) availability undetermined, adding to pool 2012-10-03 16:16:07,069 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_173_updates failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_173_updates 2012-10-03 16:16:07,072 DEBUG: Instantiated Handler subclass __builtin__.NvidiaDriver173Updates from name NvidiaDriver173Updates 2012-10-03 16:16:07,073 DEBUG: nvidia.available: falling back to default 2012-10-03 16:16:07,105 DEBUG: NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (post-release updates) availability undetermined, adding to pool 2012-10-03 16:16:07,112 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_173 failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_173 2012-10-03 16:16:07,118 DEBUG: Instantiated Handler subclass __builtin__.NvidiaDriver173 from name NvidiaDriver173 2012-10-03 16:16:07,119 DEBUG: nvidia.available: falling back to default 2012-10-03 16:16:07,159 DEBUG: NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver availability undetermined, adding to pool 2012-10-03 16:16:07,166 WARNING: modinfo for module nvidia_96_updates failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module nvidia_96_updates 2012-10-03 16:16:07,171 DEBUG: Instantiated Handler subclass __builtin__.NvidiaDriver96Updates from name NvidiaDriver96Updates 2012-10-03 16:16:07,171 DEBUG: nvidia.available: falling back to default 2012-10-03 16:16:07,188 DEBUG: XorgDriverHandler(nvidia_96_updates, nvidia-96-updates, None): Disabling as package video ABI xorg-video-abi-10 does not match X.org video ABI xorg-video-abi-11 2012-10-03 16:16:07,188 DEBUG: NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver (post-release updates) not available 2012-10-03 16:16:07,188 DEBUG: loading custom handler /usr/share/jockey/handlers/madwifi.py 2012-10-03 16:16:07,195 WARNING: modinfo for module ath_pci failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module ath_pci 2012-10-03 16:16:07,195 DEBUG: Instantiated Handler subclass __builtin__.MadwifiHandler from name MadwifiHandler 2012-10-03 16:16:07,196 DEBUG: Alternate Atheros "madwifi" driver availability undetermined, adding to pool 2012-10-03 16:16:07,196 DEBUG: loading custom handler /usr/share/jockey/handlers/sl_modem.py 2012-10-03 16:16:07,213 DEBUG: Instantiated Handler subclass __builtin__.SlModem from name SlModem 2012-10-03 16:16:07,234 DEBUG: Software modem not available 2012-10-03 16:16:07,234 DEBUG: loading custom handler /usr/share/jockey/handlers/broadcom_wl.py 2012-10-03 16:16:07,239 WARNING: modinfo for module wl failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module wl 2012-10-03 16:16:07,277 DEBUG: Instantiated Handler subclass __builtin__.BroadcomWLHandler from name BroadcomWLHandler 2012-10-03 16:16:07,277 DEBUG: Broadcom STA wireless driver availability undetermined, adding to pool 2012-10-03 16:16:07,278 DEBUG: all custom handlers loaded 2012-10-03 16:16:07,278 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'pci:v00008086d000027D8sv00001043sd000082EAbc04sc03i00') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,568 DEBUG: searching handler for driver ID {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'snd_hda_intel'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,699 DEBUG: no corresponding handler available for {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'snd_hda_intel', 'jockey_handler': 'KernelModuleHandler'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,699 DEBUG: searching handler for driver ID {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'snd_hda_intel'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,699 DEBUG: no corresponding handler available for {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'snd_hda_intel', 'jockey_handler': 'KernelModuleHandler'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,699 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'input:b0000v0000p0000e0000-e0,5,kramlsfw6,') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,704 DEBUG: searching handler for driver ID {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'evbug'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,704 DEBUG: no corresponding handler available for {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'evbug', 'jockey_handler': 'KernelModuleHandler'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,704 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'pci:v00008086d000027DAsv00001043sd00008179bc0Csc05i00') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,707 DEBUG: searching handler for driver ID {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'i2c_i801'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,707 DEBUG: no corresponding handler available for {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'i2c_i801', 'jockey_handler': 'KernelModuleHandler'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,707 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'acpi:PNP0C01:') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,707 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'acpi:PNP0B00:') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,707 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'pci:v00001969d00001026sv00001043sd00008304bc02sc00i00') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,710 DEBUG: searching handler for driver ID {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'atl1e'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,710 DEBUG: no corresponding handler available for {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'atl1e', 'jockey_handler': 'KernelModuleHandler'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,710 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'input:b0003v04F2p0816e0111-e0,1,4,11,14,k71,72,73,74,75,77,79,7A,7B,7C,7D,7E,7F,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,8A,8C,8E,96,98,9E,9F,A1,A3,A4,A5,A6,AD,B0,B1,B2,B3,B4,B7,B8,B9,BA,BB,BC,BD,BE,BF,C0,C1,C2,F0,ram4,l0,1,2,sfw') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,711 DEBUG: searching handler for driver ID {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'evbug'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,711 DEBUG: no corresponding handler available for {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'evbug', 'jockey_handler': 'KernelModuleHandler'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,711 DEBUG: searching handler for driver ID {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'mac_hid'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,711 DEBUG: no corresponding handler available for {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'mac_hid', 'jockey_handler': 'KernelModuleHandler'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,711 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'platform:pcspkr') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,711 DEBUG: searching handler for driver ID {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'pcspkr'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,711 DEBUG: no corresponding handler available for {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'pcspkr', 'jockey_handler': 'KernelModuleHandler'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,712 DEBUG: searching handler for driver ID {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'snd_pcsp'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,712 DEBUG: no corresponding handler available for {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'snd_pcsp', 'jockey_handler': 'KernelModuleHandler'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,712 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'usb:v1D6Bp0001d0302dc09dsc00dp00ic09isc00ip00') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,724 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'input:b0019v0000p0001e0000-e0,1,k74,ramlsfw') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,724 DEBUG: searching handler for driver ID {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'evbug'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,724 DEBUG: no corresponding handler available for {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'evbug', 'jockey_handler': 'KernelModuleHandler'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,724 DEBUG: searching handler for driver ID {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'mac_hid'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,724 DEBUG: no corresponding handler available for {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'mac_hid', 'jockey_handler': 'KernelModuleHandler'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,724 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'acpi:PNP0C04:') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,724 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'platform:eisa') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,725 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'pci:v00008086d000027CCsv00001043sd00008179bc0Csc03i20') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,728 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'platform:Fixed MDIO bus') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,728 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'pci:v00008086d000029C0sv00001043sd000082B0bc06sc00i00') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,731 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'usb:v045Ep0766d0101dcEFdsc02dp01ic01isc01ip00') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,777 DEBUG: searching handler for driver ID {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'snd_usb_audio'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,777 DEBUG: no corresponding handler available for {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'snd_usb_audio', 'jockey_handler': 'KernelModuleHandler'} 2012-10-03 16:16:07,777 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'acpi:PNP0F03:PNP0F13:') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,777 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'acpi:PNP0000:') 2012-10-03 16:16:07,777 DEBUG: querying driver db <jockey.detection.LocalKernelModulesDriverDB instance at 0xb7231a0c> about HardwareID('modalias', 'pci:v00001002d000095C5sv0000174Bsd0000E400bc03sc00i00') 2012-10-03 16:16:08,072 DEBUG: searching handler for driver ID {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'fglrx_updates', 'package': 'fglrx-updates'} 2012-10-03 16:16:08,133 DEBUG: fglrx.enabled(fglrx_updates): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt None 2012-10-03 16:16:08,134 DEBUG: fglrx_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-10-03 16:16:08,072 DEBUG: found match in handler pool xorg:fglrx_updates([FglrxDriverUpdate, nonfree, disabled] ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver (post-release updates)) 2012-10-03 16:16:08,136 WARNING: modinfo for module fglrx_updates failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module fglrx_updates 2012-10-03 16:16:08,147 DEBUG: fglrx.available: falling back to default 2012-10-03 16:16:08,173 DEBUG: fglrx.enabled(fglrx_updates): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt None 2012-10-03 16:16:08,173 DEBUG: fglrx_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-10-03 16:16:08,162 DEBUG: got handler xorg:fglrx_updates([FglrxDriverUpdate, nonfree, disabled] ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver (post-release updates)) 2012-10-03 16:16:08,173 DEBUG: searching handler for driver ID {'driver_type': 'kernel_module', 'kernel_module': 'fglrx', 'package': 'fglrx'} 2012-10-03 16:16:08,184 DEBUG: fglrx.enabled(fglrx): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt None 2012-10-03 16:16:08,184 DEBUG: fglrx is not the alternative in use 2012-10-03 16:16:08,173 DEBUG: found match in handler pool xorg:fglrx([FglrxDriver, nonfree, disabled] ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver) 2012-10-03 16:16:08,187 WARNING: modinfo for module fglrx failed: ERROR: modinfo: could not find module fglrx 2012-10-03 16:16:08,190 DEBUG: fglrx.available: falling back to default 2012-10-03 16:16:08,216 DEBUG: fglrx.enabled(fglrx): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/mesa/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt None . . . 2012-10-03 16:18:10,552 DEBUG: install progress initramfs-tools 62.500000 2012-10-03 16:18:22,249 DEBUG: install progress libc-bin 62.500000 2012-10-03 16:18:23,251 DEBUG: Selecting previously unselected package dkms. (Reading database ... 142496 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking dkms (from .../dkms_2.2.0.3-1ubuntu3_all.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package fakeroot. Unpacking fakeroot (from .../fakeroot_1.18.2-1_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package fglrx-updates. Unpacking fglrx-updates (from .../fglrx-updates_2%3a8.960-0ubuntu1.1_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package fglrx-amdcccle-updates. Unpacking fglrx-amdcccle-updates (from .../fglrx-amdcccle-updates_2%3a8.960-0ubuntu1.1_i386.deb) ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Processing triggers for ureadahead ... ureadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot dpkg: error processing libxss1 (--configure): package libxss1 is already installed and configured dpkg: error processing chromium-codecs-ffmpeg (--configure): package chromium-codecs-ffmpeg is already installed and configured dpkg: error processing chromium-browser (--configure): package chromium-browser is already installed and configured dpkg: error processing chromium-browser-l10n (--configure): package chromium-browser-l10n is already installed and configured Setting up dkms (2.2.0.3-1ubuntu3) ... No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Setting up fakeroot (1.18.2-1) ... update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/fakeroot-sysv to provide /usr/bin/fakeroot (fakeroot) in auto mode. Setting up fglrx-updates (2:8.960-0ubuntu1.1) ... update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/fglrx/ld.so.conf to provide /etc/ld.so.conf.d/i386-linux-gnu_GL.conf (i386-linux-gnu_gl_conf) in auto mode. update-alternatives: warning: skip creation of /etc/OpenCL/vendors/amdocl64.icd because associated file /usr/lib/fglrx/etc/OpenCL/vendors/amdocl64.icd (of link group i386-linux-gnu_gl_conf) doesn't exist. update-alternatives: warning: skip creation of /usr/lib32/libaticalcl.so because associated file /usr/lib32/fglrx/libaticalcl.so (of link group i386-linux-gnu_gl_conf) doesn't exist. update-alternatives: warning: skip creation of /usr/lib32/libaticalrt.so because associated file /usr/lib32/fglrx/libaticalrt.so (of link group i386-linux-gnu_gl_conf) doesn't exist. update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/fglrx/alt_ld.so.conf to provide /etc/ld.so.conf.d/x86_64-linux-gnu_GL.conf (x86_64-linux-gnu_gl_conf) in auto mode. update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated) Loading new fglrx-updates-8.960 DKMS files... First Installation: checking all kernels... Building only for 3.2.0-29-generic-pae Building for architecture i686 Building initial module for 3.2.0-29-generic-pae Done. fglrx_updates: Running module version sanity check. - Original module - No original module exists within this kernel - Installation - Installing to /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/updates/dkms/ depmod...... DKMS: install completed. update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated) Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ... Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index... Setting up fglrx-amdcccle-updates (2:8.960-0ubuntu1.1) ... Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-29-generic-pae Processing triggers for libc-bin ... ldconfig deferred processing now taking place Errors were encountered while processing: libxss1 chromium-codecs-ffmpeg chromium-browser chromium-browser-l10n Error in function: SystemError: E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) 2012-10-03 16:18:23,256 ERROR: Package failed to install: Selecting previously unselected package dkms. (Reading database ... 142496 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking dkms (from .../dkms_2.2.0.3-1ubuntu3_all.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package fakeroot. Unpacking fakeroot (from .../fakeroot_1.18.2-1_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package fglrx-updates. Unpacking fglrx-updates (from .../fglrx-updates_2%3a8.960-0ubuntu1.1_i386.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package fglrx-amdcccle-updates. Unpacking fglrx-amdcccle-updates (from .../fglrx-amdcccle-updates_2%3a8.960-0ubuntu1.1_i386.deb) ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Processing triggers for ureadahead ... ureadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot dpkg: error processing libxss1 (--configure): package libxss1 is already installed and configured dpkg: error processing chromium-codecs-ffmpeg (--configure): package chromium-codecs-ffmpeg is already installed and configured dpkg: error processing chromium-browser (--configure): package chromium-browser is already installed and configured dpkg: error processing chromium-browser-l10n (--configure): package chromium-browser-l10n is already installed and configured Setting up dkms (2.2.0.3-1ubuntu3) ... No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Setting up fakeroot (1.18.2-1) ... update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/fakeroot-sysv to provide /usr/bin/fakeroot (fakeroot) in auto mode. Setting up fglrx-updates (2:8.960-0ubuntu1.1) ... update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/fglrx/ld.so.conf to provide /etc/ld.so.conf.d/i386-linux-gnu_GL.conf (i386-linux-gnu_gl_conf) in auto mode. update-alternatives: warning: skip creation of /etc/OpenCL/vendors/amdocl64.icd because associated file /usr/lib/fglrx/etc/OpenCL/vendors/amdocl64.icd (of link group i386-linux-gnu_gl_conf) doesn't exist. update-alternatives: warning: skip creation of /usr/lib32/libaticalcl.so because associated file /usr/lib32/fglrx/libaticalcl.so (of link group i386-linux-gnu_gl_conf) doesn't exist. update-alternatives: warning: skip creation of /usr/lib32/libaticalrt.so because associated file /usr/lib32/fglrx/libaticalrt.so (of link group i386-linux-gnu_gl_conf) doesn't exist. update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/fglrx/alt_ld.so.conf to provide /etc/ld.so.conf.d/x86_64-linux-gnu_GL.conf (x86_64-linux-gnu_gl_conf) in auto mode. update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated) Loading new fglrx-updates-8.960 DKMS files... First Installation: checking all kernels... Building only for 3.2.0-29-generic-pae Building for architecture i686 Building initial module for 3.2.0-29-generic-pae Done. fglrx_updates: Running module version sanity check. - Original module - No original module exists within this kernel - Installation - Installing to /lib/modules/3.2.0-29-generic-pae/updates/dkms/ depmod...... DKMS: install completed. update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated) Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ... Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf.index... Setting up fglrx-amdcccle-updates (2:8.960-0ubuntu1.1) ... Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ... update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-29-generic-pae Processing triggers for libc-bin ... ldconfig deferred processing now taking place Errors were encountered while processing: libxss1 chromium-codecs-ffmpeg chromium-browser chromium-browser-l10n Error in function: SystemError: E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) 2012-10-03 16:18:23,590 WARNING: /sys/module/fglrx_updates/drivers does not exist, cannot rebind fglrx_updates driver 2012-10-03 16:18:43,601 DEBUG: fglrx.enabled(fglrx_updates): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/fglrx/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/fglrx/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-10-03 16:18:43,601 DEBUG: fglrx_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-10-03 16:18:43,617 DEBUG: fglrx.enabled(fglrx_updates): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/fglrx/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/fglrx/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-10-03 16:18:43,617 DEBUG: fglrx_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-10-03 16:18:54,143 DEBUG: fglrx.enabled(fglrx_updates): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/fglrx/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/fglrx/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-10-03 16:18:54,144 DEBUG: fglrx_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-10-03 16:18:54,154 DEBUG: fglrx.enabled(fglrx_updates): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/fglrx/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/fglrx/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-10-03 16:18:54,154 DEBUG: fglrx_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-10-03 16:18:54,182 DEBUG: fglrx.enabled(fglrx): target_alt /usr/lib/fglrx/ld.so.conf current_alt /usr/lib/fglrx/ld.so.conf other target alt /usr/lib/fglrx/alt_ld.so.conf other current alt /usr/lib/fglrx/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-10-03 16:18:54,182 DEBUG: XorgDriverHandler(%s, %s).enabled(): No X.org driver set, not checking 2012-10-03 16:18:54,215 DEBUG: fglrx.enabled(fglrx_updates): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/fglrx/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/fglrx/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-10-03 16:18:54,215 DEBUG: fglrx_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-10-03 16:18:54,229 DEBUG: fglrx.enabled(fglrx_updates): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/fglrx/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/fglrx/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-10-03 16:18:54,229 DEBUG: fglrx_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-10-03 16:18:54,268 DEBUG: fglrx.enabled(fglrx_updates): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/fglrx/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/fglrx/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-10-03 16:18:54,268 DEBUG: fglrx_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-10-03 16:18:54,279 DEBUG: fglrx.enabled(fglrx_updates): target_alt None current_alt /usr/lib/fglrx/ld.so.conf other target alt None other current alt /usr/lib/fglrx/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-10-03 16:18:54,279 DEBUG: fglrx_updates is not the alternative in use 2012-10-03 16:18:54,298 DEBUG: fglrx.enabled(fglrx): target_alt /usr/lib/fglrx/ld.so.conf current_alt /usr/lib/fglrx/ld.so.conf other target alt /usr/lib/fglrx/alt_ld.so.conf other current alt /usr/lib/fglrx/alt_ld.so.conf 2012-10-03 16:18:54,298 DEBUG: XorgDriverHandler(%s, %s).enabled(): No X.org driver set, not checking 2012-10-03 16:18:57,828 DEBUG: Shutting down I don't know how to troubleshoot from looking at the log file, could somebody assist me with this please? You can download the log file at: https://www.dropbox.com/s/a59d2hyabo02q5z/jockey.log

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• Inverted schedctl usage in the JVM

  - by Dave

  The schedctl facility in Solaris allows a thread to request that the kernel defer involuntary preemption for a brief period. The mechanism is strictly advisory - the kernel can opt to ignore the request. Schedctl is typically used to bracket lock critical sections. That, in turn, can avoid convoying -- threads piling up on a critical section behind a preempted lock-holder -- and other lock-related performance pathologies. If you're interested see the man pages for schedctl_start() and schedctl_stop() and the schedctl.h include file. The implementation is very efficient. schedctl_start(), which asks that preemption be deferred, simply stores into a thread-specific structure -- the schedctl block -- that the kernel maps into user-space. Similarly, schedctl_stop() clears the flag set by schedctl_stop() and then checks a "preemption pending" flag in the block. Normally, this will be false, but if set schedctl_stop() will yield to politely grant the CPU to other threads. Note that you can't abuse this facility for long-term preemption avoidance as the deferral is brief. If your thread exceeds the grace period the kernel will preempt it and transiently degrade its effective scheduling priority. Further reading : US05937187 and various papers by Andy Tucker. We'll now switch topics to the implementation of the "synchronized" locking construct in the HotSpot JVM. If a lock is contended then on multiprocessor systems we'll spin briefly to try to avoid context switching. Context switching is wasted work and inflicts various cache and TLB penalties on the threads involved. If context switching were "free" then we'd never spin to avoid switching, but that's not the case. We use an adaptive spin-then-park strategy. One potentially undesirable outcome is that we can be preempted while spinning. When our spinning thread is finally rescheduled the lock may or may not be available. If not, we'll spin and then potentially park (block) again, thus suffering a 2nd context switch. Recall that the reason we spin is to avoid context switching. To avoid this scenario I've found it useful to enable schedctl to request deferral while spinning. But while spinning I've arranged for the code to periodically check or poll the "preemption pending" flag. If that's found set we simply abandon our spinning attempt and park immediately. This avoids the double context-switch scenario above. One annoyance is that the schedctl blocks for the threads in a given process are tightly packed on special pages mapped from kernel space into user-land. As such, writes to the schedctl blocks can cause false sharing on other adjacent blocks. Hopefully the kernel folks will make changes to avoid this by padding and aligning the blocks to ensure that one cache line underlies at most one schedctl block at any one time.

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